What were those traces that lit up the night sky of Mexico?
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New York (CNN Business) --
As many as 40 of SpaceX's Starlink satellites are expected to be knocked out of orbit thanks to bad timing: The company launched the satellites directly into a solar storm.
A batch of 49 Starlink internet satellites were at SpaceX's last launch on February 3, and now the company expects to lose most of them due to a space weather event known as a geomagnetic storm.
This event occurs when streams of charged particles, or solar winds, emitted by the sun interact with the Earth's magnetic field.
The energized particles can heat the upper atmosphere and cause it to thicken.
(Yes, there is still atmosphere in the areas of outer space closest to home. Earth's atmosphere vanishes over thousands of miles.)
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In this case, the storm impacted the area of orbit where SpaceX's newer Starlink satellites were deployed and made the atmosphere thick enough that the satellites couldn't maneuver until they reached their intended orbit.
It is not clear how big the financial impact will be.
SpaceX has not shared how much it costs to build a Starlink satellite, although company president Gwynne Shotwell said in 2019 that the price was well under $1 million a piece.
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The satellites SpaceX launched last week were expected to join the roughly 2,000 Starlink satellites it has already launched as the company works to dramatically increase its global space-based internet business, a first-of-its-kind venture that hopes to enable people even in remote areas of the world for high-speed Internet access.
SpaceX has said it will eventually need as many as 42,000 satellites, all working in coordination to cover the world in connectivity, in order to provide uninterrupted high-speed service.
In January, the service had about 145,000 users in 25 countries.
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It's not entirely clear how SpaceX assessed the weather in space ahead of last week's launch.
The company did not respond to a request for comment and rarely responds to questions from reporters.
But rocket launches have been delayed before due to space weather events, said Bill Murtagh, program coordinator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center.
And launch officials keep a close eye on space weather before rockets blast off.
"Different companies have their own criteria" for deciding whether or not a space weather event will affect their launch, Murtagh added.
James Spann, head of space weather within NASA's division that studies the Sun, also said it's hard to predict exactly how such a geomagnetic storm might have impacted Starlink.
Since the storm was not that severe, it is not unreasonable to think that it would not have had an impact on the launch.
And while the loss of 40 satellites isn't ideal, Spann stressed that the data NASA and NOAA will gain from looking at how Starlink satellites reacted to the storm will help improve space weather modeling in the future.
"That's the silver lining," he told CNN Business.
"We're going to use the data points to ensure that the chances of success in the future are even better than they are now."
Still, GPS data from the Starlink satellites "suggests the storm's rate of escalation and severity caused atmospheric drag to increase by up to 50% more than during previous launches," SpaceX wrote in an update on its site. Web.
"The Starlink team instructed the satellites to enter a safe mode where they would fly edge-on (like a sheet of paper) to minimize drag, to effectively 'shelter from the storm,'" according to the company.
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But early data suggests additional storm drag prevented the satellites from disabling safe mode and "up to 40 of the satellites will re-enter or have already re-entered Earth's atmosphere," the SpaceX post read.
The company noted that failed satellites should not pose any risk to other satellites during their descent, and should disintegrate as they hit the thickest part of Earth's atmosphere so that it does not threaten any person or property on the ground.
All of those security measures are by design, the company said.
SpaceX has said it intentionally deploys its Starlink satellites at a lower altitude than their intended orbit so that if a satellite fails, it doesn't fly uncontrollably through orbit for a long time, a key space debris mitigation effort.
But deployment at a lower altitude may also be a key reason these Starlink satellites were so severely affected by the geomagnetic storm.
And in a new filing with the Federal Communications Commission, which must approve satellite launches, NASA expressed concern that the large number of satellites SpaceX has proposed could become a threat to the International Space Station and other major assets. in the space.
It's all about space weather
About every decade, the Sun completes a solar cycle of calm and stormy activity and begins a new one.
Solar flares and coronal mass ejection events -- when the Sun's outer atmosphere spits out plasma and magnetic fields -- can affect the power grid, satellites, GPS, airlines, rockets and astronauts in space .
Space weather is known to cause disruptions to terrestrial communications systems by affecting radio frequencies.
Our current solar cycle, Solar Cycle 25, officially began in December 2019. Right now, we are emerging from a period of relative calm and the current cycle is expected to reach its most active space weather phase in 2025.
On a scale of one to five, the geomagnetic storm that affected the Starlink satellites last week was a two, which is pretty mild, Murtagh said.
The Sun causes "several hundred" storms of that magnitude every 11-year solar cycle, Murtagh said.
"The beautiful visible manifestation [of space weather] is the northern lights that everyone loves, that's the nice, pretty part. But the consequences, as we found out on Friday, can be quite significant for some of these technologies," Murtagh said. .
Ashley Strickland contributed to this story
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